Two major ASAP grants bring spatial proteomics to Parkinson's disease
Matthias Mann, director at the Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry in Martinsried, Germany has received two research grants to study the mechanisms of Parkinson's disease from Aligning Science Across Parkinson's in partnership with The Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research.
Parkinson's disease is the world's fastest-growing neurological disorder, affecting over 10 million people. Why it progresses so differently from one patient to the next — and why roughly one in three Parkinson's patients also develops a second brain disease that accelerates decline — has remained out of reach of conventional methods. “Aligning Science Across Parkinson’s” (ASAP), in partnership with The Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research (MJFF), has now awarded two research grants to Matthias Mann, Director at the Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry, to deploy the lab's world-leading mass-spectrometry-based proteomics against these questions. He will work with co-investigators Laura Parkkinen (University of Oxford), Günter Höglinger and Franziska Hopfner (LMU Klinikum), and Epaminondas Doxakis (Biomedical Research Foundation, Academy of Athens). The three-year projects will begin in June of this year. These teams will join ASAP’s Collaborative Research Network (CRN), an international, multidisciplinary, multi-institutional network working to address high-priority research questions about Parkinson's disease.
The first of the two research projects will be led by Matthias Mann, director at the Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry. Matthias Mann and co-investigators Laura Parkkinen from the University of Oxford and Günter Höglinger and Franziska Hopfner from LMU Munich aim to better understand why Parkinson's disease progresses so differently from patient to patient despite sharing similar disease characteristics. This variability is compounded by the fact that around one in three Parkinson’s patients also develops additional brain diseases—such as Alzheimer’s pathology or vascular dementia—that accelerate decline and complicate diagnosis and treatment. Specifically, they will focus on identifying the molecular factors that determine how alpha-synuclein—a protein that clumps together in the brains of Parkinson's patients—spreads and may contribute to disease processes.
The team will analyze samples from brain tissue, cerebrospinal fluid, blood, and skin to identify what drives this protein aggregation. “Every Parkinson’s patient is different—their symptoms, their rate of decline, their response to treatment. We want to understand why,” says Matthias Mann. “By measuring the full range of proteins in patient samples, we can identify the specific molecular patterns behind each person’s disease. That is the foundation for earlier diagnosis, better monitoring, and treatments that target the actual cause rather than just the symptoms.”
The ultimate goal is to develop better biomarkers for early detection and disease monitoring, as well as to identify new possible targets that could lead to drug development.
The second of the two projects, led by Epaminondas Doxakis from the University of Athens, Matthias Mann will serve as a collaborator to study co-pathologies in patients with Parkinson's disease. This collaborative effort aims to make progress in discovering new therapeutic avenues for these challenging disease variants.
1. Project Title: Deciphering the Aggregatome: Unraveling Alpha-Synuclein Seeding Drivers in Parkinson’s Disease across Human Biomaterials
2. Project Title: Decoding co-pathological mechanisms in Parkinson's disease: from molecular interactions to disease progression
